


Kote's Swear Jar

by LadyLackless



Category: Kingkiller Chronicles - Patrick Rothfuss
Genre: "Dandilions Dueling", Fluff, Gen, If you do not like swearing this is not the fic for you, M/M, and general silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 19:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4316097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLackless/pseuds/LadyLackless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bast sets up competing swear jars in the Waystone. Kote loses. Could be interpreted as Kote/Bast, if you squint just right. One-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kote's Swear Jar

Bast sat at the bar and shuffled the deck of cards. He shuffled loudly, impatiently, as though the snapping of the cards could disturb the Waystone’s stolid silence. Outside, the spring night was dark and just shy of chilly; inside, darkness gathered in the corners of the room, in the shadows cast by disused chairs. There were no customers tonight. No customers, just the glum innkeeper and his tall, dark, handsome apprentice. Alone. Together. In the inn.

Bast huffed and began to practice a poker cheat called the Old Women’s Duel. Secreting the Queen of Spades up one sleeve, he wondered if his Reshi had ever seen this cheat before. It would be lovely to snare Kote in a little trap, startle from him some sort of reaction. Or perhaps it would be better if Kote knew the cheat and caught him at it; then there would be laughter and a friendly scuffle, and a momentary lifting of the silence.

The man in question—his Reshi, his obsession—stood at one end of the bar, wiping it with a soft cloth and gazing absently at the rows of bottles. That effing Chronicler, Bast thought. Chronicler’s visit was supposed to change things. Stir up old memories, make the real Kvothe resurface—perhaps banish glum Kote forever. But two span after Chronicler’s departure, his Reshi moped just as sulkily as before. Bast slapped the cards angrily into place, cursing when the Queen of Spades went skittering out of his sleeve and across the floor. “Anhouen!”

“Language, Bast,” Kote said mildly, and Bast scowled. Was his Reshi joking, or was this another symptom of the innkeeper persona taking hold, of mild-mannered Kote settling in to dampen his Kvothe’s fiery soul? The old Reshi had never scolded him for swearing. Just like the old Reshi had never sprinkled lavender flowers on the clean sheets, or fretted over a scuff on the inn floor...

Bast watched as Kote wandered behind the bar to perform his ritualistic bottle polishing. The long, slender hands lingered on the gleaming bottle of elderberry wine, and though from his seat at the bar Bast could see only the back of his Reshi’s head he knew that the green eyes would be running over the rows of bottles, searching for anything out of place.

“Bast, will you come help me? I think this shelf is loose—” Kote set the elderberry wine to one side and moved a hand to steady the second shelf of jewel-bright liquors. Bast stood and stretched—and jumped as bottles smashed and glass shards tinkled to the floor. 

“Fuck,” Kote said, gazing at the fallen shelf.

Musn’t let Reshi clean that up mustn’t let Reshi cut himself, Bast thought. He dashed to the kitchen, bounding over chairs and tables in his mad pursuit of broom and dustpan.

When he returned, Kote had not stirred from his place by the broken bottles, looking down at the glass wet by a rainbow of liquors. For a moment, all that could be heard was the steady dribble as liquor ran down to the floor. Until Kote opened his mouth.

“Fuck shit damn. Fuck.”

“Language, Reshi,” Bast said.

“Here, let me—”

“I insist.” Bast pushed past his Reshi and knelt to sweep up the shards. “You know, I think we need a swear jar for you.”

“A swear jar?”

“You could throw in a jot in every time you blister our ears with that tongue of yours…”

“But you’re the one whose lascivious tongue needs to be halted.”

Bast looked up, surprised by the teasing in Reshi’s voice. With his green eyes dancing, Kote hardly looked innkeeper-ish at all.

“None of your business what I do to the village girls,” Bast said. Or boys, he added in his head.

“Hmm.” Kote fetched the mop.

“Oi, you’re mopping over my hands!”

“Then get your fucking hands out of the way.”

Bast stood up. “That’s one jot for the swear jar!” 

“Nah.”

“No?”

“If we’re going to do this swear jar thing, we’re going to do it right,” Kote said, grinning. “Two swear jars. One for your curses, one for mine. And at the end of a span, you get whatever money’s in mine, and I get whatever’s in yours.”

“Fine,” Bast said. “And the winner gets to mix a drink for the loser, and then we play cards.”

“Fine. But swearing in Faen costs extra.”

“What!”

“Faen is a language of power, with magic woven into every syllable,” Kote said, shrugging, as if he couldn’t help but relate the facts. “Correspondingly, you swear in Faen, you pay up.”

“Fine! Fine!” Bast said, straightening the second shelf’s pins and setting it into place. There was a gaping hole now, where the bottles had stood: the melon liqueur and the damson wine, among others of Kote’s favorites. But Reshi was already coming back from the kitchen, two jars in his hands and a smile on his face, and Bast couldn’t help but think that he’d break every bottle in the inn, if it would make this kind of difference.

“Yours is the one on the right,” Kote said, setting the conspicuously larger jar on the right side of the shelf.

“No, yours is,” Bast said.

“So you admit I’m always ‘right.’”

“Reshi!” Bast said. “For a pun that bad, I demand you put two jots in your swear jar!”

“Fine,” said Kote, laughing for the first time all evening. The two jots chimed as they were tossed into the jar, and for a moment there was music in the Waystone again.

 

The first day of the challenge, they spoke to each other with excessive politesse, and Bast noted that his Reshi spent the entire day with eyes twinkling as if he were holding in a laugh.

 

The second day, Kote began to test him.

“Here are your fu—fresh eggs, Bast,” Kote said, handing him his plate at breakfast time.

And, “Why don’t we clean all of this sh—um, shtuff—off the kitchen counter.”

And, “Have some dam—son wine, Bast!”

Bast had to throw a handful of copper pennies into his jar when he washed a pair of his red underpants in the same basin as the pillowcases, giving the pillowcases a pink tinge and causing himself to curse in four languages. But overall, he counted the day a success.

 

The third day, the prentice boy—Aaron—headed off to take the king’s coin and fight in the distant war. Kote did not curse. Bast cursed but nobody noticed.

 

And so the days passed, and Kote’s brief good mood seemed to pass with them. The silence re-settled itself in the corners of the inn, and the liquorless shelf with the two jars on it seemed to ache. At times Kote’s eyes lingered on it, searching for the missing bottles like a tongue probing the gap left by a missing tooth. So it was that on Felling morning, the final day of the contest, Bast awoke filled with a faint unease.

By rights, he should have burrowed deeper into his blankets and avoided honest work for another hour or so. Instead he hauled himself out of bed. Sidling past his full-length mirror, he gave his glamour a quick check and tucked in his shirttails. Kote should still be asleep. Perhaps he’d make breakfast for his Reshi, just this once.

But what was that ragged breathing coming from the taproom? Bast paused with one foot on the threshold. It was Kote, face tight with pain as he contorted in a series of unfluid motions. Silent, Bast leaned against the doorway. His Reshi looked grayfaced in the dawn light, and the awkward movements were those of one who, after an injury, struggles to test the limits of his newly-diminished strength. When at last Kote stopped and stood panting, Bast spoke.

“Was that the Lethani?”

Kote started, then sighed. “You shouldn’t watch me, Bast. I thought I was alone.”

“Will you teach me?”

“Absolutely not.” The innkeeper turned to face the wall.

“Fight me, then.”

Surprised, Kote turned to find Bast bouncing comically from foot to foot, fists circling. Kote sighed, then smirked. “Fine. But have pity on an old man.”

“You’re not old, Reshi,” Bast said, settling onto his heels. He would have to be careful not to hurt his Reshi. He would have to exercise control, and—

Kote feinted at Bast’s head, then whipped a front kick—telegraphed and obviously for show yet alarmingly fast nonetheless—toward Bast’s nether regions. Surprised, Bast scrambled backward and nearly knocked over a chair. “What! That’s against the rules!”

“What rules?” Kote said. “I don’t remember any rules.” He smiled with pure wickedness.

Bast darted forward, brushing past Kote’s defenses to bat the man’s ribs before reaching to catch his Reshi in an elbow lock. But Kote stepped unexpectedly closer to him, slamming a knee into Bast’s inner thigh and sending the younger man stumbling backward. Suddenly there was a hand in his armpit—what was it doing there?—and another in the crook of one knee. He was off-balance—he was falling—oddly, he was falling parallel to the floor. He hit a table with a crash and lay on the floorboards, dazed.

“Bast? Oh shit. Oh Bast, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Bast, look at me. Are you alright? Oh shit, oh fuck fuck fuck…” Kote kneeled next to him and cradled Bast’s head in his hands. “Bast, look at me. Can you focus your eyes? Oh, I didn’t expect you to be so fucking light—“

Bast laughed, a shrieking laugh of pure mad delight that built in a crescendo from low and soft to high and maniacal.

“Did you hit your head?” Kote whispered, clearly taken aback.

“No,” Bast said. “No, my head is perfectly fine. But my ears are bleeding.”

“What?” Eyes wide, Kote bent to examine Bast’s ears.

“By which I mean, I think you owe me at least a silver talent after that string of cusses,” Bast said.

And now it was Kote who was laughing, sitting back on his heels and wiping the sweat from his forehead. Relieved. “Yes, I suppose you won.”

Yes, Bast thought. His Reshi’s hair shone red in the daylight, and for a moment the innkeeper’s eyes were nothing but green.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Jammy Toast for being a beautiful beta.


End file.
